My thoughts on unit 2A:
As far as the textbook is concerned, I found the portion of
the introduction about accessibility to be the most interesting part in the textbook introduction. The idea that not only can we use digital media to reach both our target
audiences, without cost inhibiting us, is exciting; however, what I find even
more exciting is the opportunity this, and the ease of use for the general
public, presents for reaching a wider audience. It is discussed in this section,
that while high school students don't have access to the Library of Congress,
they do have access to digital archives belonging to the Library of Congress.
This section is exciting and interesting to me because it discusses, not only
opening doors to young people, but of opening doors to persons who lack the
ability and resources to travel somewhere simply to gain access to sources of
knowledge which they cannot otherwise get.
This prompted me to think about the differences between
reading the textbook online versus as a hard copy. It really hit me how much
more accessible a digital textbook is as compared to a print textbook. As a
person who experiences frequent vision changes, as a symptom of a chronic
illness, I find that digital textbooks are much easier to use, but have put
very little thought into why that is. Thanks to modern technology it is easy to
use most websites with screen reading; Google Chrome has screen reading
extensions and Microsoft Edge has a built-in function that will read websites
to you. Digital textbooks usually either come with a function that will read
the book to you, can be read on Kindles which have similar functions, or can be
read by screen readers. Gone are the days of always having to wait weeks for
your school's disability access departments to get files for things like
Kurzweil to you. Certainly, we still need to do this at times, but even half of
digital textbooks coming with these features can save a lot of time and energy
for persons with disabilities, and allows able-bodied persons access to things
that while not necessary, can certainly be useful for auditory learners.
Digital history website thoughts:
I looked through many local digital history websites for
this module and found that a few really stood out to me.
- · The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media: I found ‘the Hub’ to be a really unique feature of the website, it shows recent tweets from the accounts for their various projects, which makes it very easy to follow any of the projects on Twitter and to quickly get an idea of what the projects are. I also felt that this was one of, if not the, most searchable of the websites. It allows you to easily search the projects by content, division, funder, or platform; which is nice because they have a variety of types of content that would otherwise be frustrating to search through. I found The Hurricane Digital History Bank and A Liberian Journey to be particularly interesting projects.
- · Digital History Reader: Seems cool, but is very difficult to read given that at least 80% of the website is just a brown border and the rest is a rectangular space with content with a box that is off center towards the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
- · The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH): Has several projects that I was very interested in looking into, but that lead you to one to two paragraphs discussing the project; but the project is seemingly not yet available. It seems like the site would be greatly improved by having a section for unavailable projects.
- · The University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab: Was my favorite of the websites I looked at for usability; and it has a lot of projects that I found to be very interesting and exciting. I spent the most time on this website, and looking at it has really shaped some of the goals and Ideas I have for my final project. I also really liked that they way the projects where done; they seem like they would interest, and be a great learning tool for, a wide audience.
- I learned a lot from looking at these and several other local digital history websites; about what works, what makes a project/website user friendly, how varied digital history projects and websites can be, and how I want my project to turn out.
Thoughts on my Final project:
I think I want to do a content focused website or blog and
include either a story map or timeline. I am also pretty sure that I want to,
and should focus on, Celtic history.
My favorite sort of general Ideas right now is:
· Focusing on the history of County Cork Ireland
· Focusing on the history of the Irish language
· Cemeteries in Monroe County Illinois, because, during high school, I personally photographed at least half of the public cemeteries in Monroe County; and examined the stories of many of the people buried in the older graves. Unfortunately, I got quite a bit of that information at the library and am not sure how much of it I could access from here in Virginia.
· A content focused website with a timeline about Brigid and her transformation from a goddess to a saint. Her story says a lot about Celtic history and conversion to Catholicism. This is what I am leaning towards.
· Focusing on the history of County Cork Ireland
· Focusing on the history of the Irish language
· Cemeteries in Monroe County Illinois, because, during high school, I personally photographed at least half of the public cemeteries in Monroe County; and examined the stories of many of the people buried in the older graves. Unfortunately, I got quite a bit of that information at the library and am not sure how much of it I could access from here in Virginia.
· A content focused website with a timeline about Brigid and her transformation from a goddess to a saint. Her story says a lot about Celtic history and conversion to Catholicism. This is what I am leaning towards.